News

Robert Dalva, the film editor who earned an Oscar nomination for his work on the touching family adventure The Black Stallion and collaborated with director Joe Johnston on five films, including Jumanji and Captain America: The First Avenger, has died. He was 80.

Dalva died Jan. 27 of lymphoma in Marin County, California, his son Matthew Dalva told The Hollywood Reporter.

Dalva attended USC film school in the same class with George Lucas, and he went to work with him and Francis Ford Coppola in 1969 as the pair launched their innovative American Zoetrope production company in San Francisco.

The relationship paid off when Lucas hired Dalva to handle second-unit photography — he shot the land speeder going across the desert — on the original Star Wars (1977).

On the Coppola-produced Black Stallion (1979), starring Mickey Rooney in an Oscar-nominated performance, Dalva partnered with director Carroll Ballard, who also did second-unit work on Star Wars.

“We had...

A Cinema Shack: The Tent of Vagabond (2022). Photo credit: Bernd Brundert.While most can hope to live authentically in the one life allotted them, some are able to expand beyond such limitations. One way is through art, which not only arouses an inner life that may stand apart from one's corporeal being, but also extends past any sort of physical life into the realm of the sublime, where it survives so long as there are people willing to appreciate it. The French photographer, filmmaker, and installation artist Agnès Varda is often referred to as having lived three lives, testifying to a career divided into three parts of artistic exploration but which are nevertheless interconnected, ultimately comprising a distinguished whole. Accordingly, Varda favored the triptych across much of her oeuvre and specifically in her installations; the division into three was as consequential to her in application as in theory.In considering...

Due to its persistent on-screen presence, the swimming pool can be taken for granted; but beneath the surface it is cinema’s Jungian friend, representing secrets lying underneath. It exudes glamour and danger, shifting beyond conscious realms. It is a key to transformation, coming of age tales and renewed relationships. It is a status symbol and whether or not the pool is intact says a lot about the mood of the film and the state of its characters. Away from states of intensity, the swimming pool emerges on screen as a signifier of a time to unwind and to forget life past the poolside. The films featured in this mix show how the pool alludes mysterious symbolism and sexual awakening; murder, lust, and love brush shoulders as sun kissed babes in bikinis whisper sweet truths or uncover deadly secrets (such as the strange swimming pool activities in Three Women or...

After getting a tease and the announcement of a theatrical touring retrospective, The Criterion Collection have now announced their Agnès Varda boxset, aptly titled The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. A gorgeous, epic undertaking, this treasure trove of cinematic beauty is split into different aspects of the Belgian-born French director’s life and career.

Arriving on a fifteen-disc Blu-ray release on August 11, the set features digital restorations of thirty-nine films, including the first home-video presentations of Les créatures, Jacquot de Nantes, and the television series Agnès de ci de là Varda. There’s also over seven hours of archival programs from Varda, a 200-page book, video introductions by the late filmmaker herself, and much, much more. Check out the details below.

The Films

Agnès Forever – Varda by Agnès (2019), Les 3 boutons (2015)

Early Varda – La Pointe Courte (1955), Ô saisons, ô châteaux (1958), Du côté de la côte (1958)

Around Paris – Cléo from 5 to 7...

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California.

About the films:

The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works in the United States. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set,...

In the wake of the wild success of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the idiosyncratic French filmmaker was lured by Hollywood move to southern California to produce what would become Model Shop. With his wife and fellow cinematic genius Agnès Varda in tow, they moved to Los Angeles in 1967 where Varda would dive headlong into a series of expressively free form personal projects that would be begin with an adventure North to Sausalito where she would meet a distant relative and the subject of her first film included in Criterion’s wonderful new Agnès Varda in California Eclipse set, Uncle Yanco.

Fitting right in line with the personal essay films that would become somewhat of a signature in her late period output with works like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès, Uncle Yanco is an invigorating sun-kissed introduction to the progressive, hippy lifestyle that her...

When, in 1967, Jacques Demy asked his wife, Agnès Varda to join him in California, where he was working on his first American feature (Model Shop, released in 1969), she agreed. Turns out, she was surprised to find herself falling in love with Los Angeles the moment she arrived. And she got to work, making three of the films collected in Criterion's box set Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California; she'd return in the early 80s to make the two others. We're collecting reviews of Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panthers (1968), Lions Love (…And Lies) (1969), Murs Murs (1980) and Documenteur (1981). » - David Hudson...

When, in 1967, Jacques Demy asked his wife, Agnès Varda to join him in California, where he was working on his first American feature (Model Shop, released in 1969), she agreed. Turns out, she was surprised to find herself falling in love with Los Angeles the moment she arrived. And she got to work, making three of the films collected in Criterion's box set Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California; she'd return in the early 80s to make the two others. We're collecting reviews of Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panthers (1968), Lions Love (…And Lies) (1969), Murs Murs (1980) and Documenteur (1981). » - David Hudson...

Stefano Knuchel, Head of the Locarno Film Summer Academy, invited me to sit in on his master class with the 2014 Locarno International Film Festival’s Pardo d’onore Swisscom winner French film director Agnès Varda.

Known as the Grandmother of the French New Wave (a term with which she takes issue, as I cite in my Conversation with Varda).Varda’s film credits include "La Pointe Courte" (1955), "Cleo from 5 to 7" (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962), "The Creatures" (Les Créatures 1966), "Lions Love (…and Lies)" (1969), "Documenteur" (1981),"Vagabond"(Sans toit ni loi, 1985), "The Gleaners and I" (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000) and " The Beaches of Agnès" (Les Plages d’Agnès, 2008).

Speaking to the group of international students, Varda shared her passion for cinema, photography, and installation work, with humor and honesty. Here are some highlights from Varda’s talk.

I asked Varda about finding inspiration and her writing process

I don’t search for ideas; I find them. They come to me or I have none. I would not sit at a table and think now I have to find ideas. I wait until something disturbs me enough, like a relationship I heard about, and then it becomes so important I have to write the screenplay.

I never wrote with someone else or directed together. I wouldn’t like that. I never worked with (her late husband, director Jacques) Demy. We would show screenplays to each other when we were finished.

When you are a filmmaker, you are a filmmaker all the time. Your mind is recording impressions, moods. You are fed with that. Inspiration is getting connections with the surprises that you see in life. Suddenly it enters in your world and it remains; you have to let it go and work on it. It’s contradictory.

Question from Student: How did you manage to navigate a male-dominated film world?

First, stop saying it’s a male world. It’s true, but it helps not to repeat it. When I started in film, I did a new language of cinema, not as a woman, but as a filmmaker. It is still a male world, as long women are not making the same salary as men.

Put yourself in a situation where you want to make films; whether you are woman or not a woman, give yourself the tools: maybe you intern, maybe you go to school, or read books. Get the tools.

On Filmmaking

We have to capture in film what we don’t know about.

If you don’t have a point-of-view it’s not worth starting to make a film.

Whatever we do in film is searching. If you meet somebody, you establish yourself, who you want to meet, what kind of relationship it is. Our whole life is made up of back and forth, decisions, options -- and then they don’t fit.

When one is filming we should be fragile; listen to that something in ourselves. The act of filming for me is so vivid, it includes what you had in mind, and includes what is happening around you at that moment -- how you felt, if you have headache, and so on. A film builds itself with what you don’t know.

Life interferes. You have friends. Kids. No kids. Then there is a leak on the wall. Everything interferes. It’s how you build the life with others.

Sometimes I go by myself to do location scouting. When I go by myself, something speaks to me in a place I’ve chosen and I know maybe we should take advantage of that. We have to be working with chance. ‘Chance’ is my assistant director.

About Cleo de 5-7

I had to be able calculate the time of speaking, taking a taxi, and so on -- it was very interesting to write what was happening and try the mechanical thing of time, to let emotion and surprise come in.

About Vagabond

I knew people who were on the road. I knew the kind of people she (Mona, the protagonist) would meet. I would write the dialogue the night before. The people I met gave me their attitude and state of mind.

About "The Beaches of Agnès"

It was supposed to be autobiographical. Like a gesture of a painter, when they do a self-portrait and look at themselves and paint. In "The Beaches of Agnès" I am turning the mirror to the people who surround me; it’s not so much about what I did in my past. It is about how you build the life with others. I am turning the mirror to the people who surround me.

Varda on Varda

In the last ten years, I’ve done installations in museums and galleries. I enjoy that other expression of things. I got out of the flat film screen -- to invade the space, using three- dimensional objects. It helps to express other things. You put yourself at risk. I’ve been experimenting in motion, and surprises.I’m naturally curious.

Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College and presents international workshops and seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...

Above: Pedro Costa's Horse Money

The Locarno Film Festival has announced their lineup for the 67th edition, taking place this August between the 6th and 16th. It speaks for itself, but, um, wow...

"Every film festival, be it small or large, claims to offer, if not an account of the state of things, then an updated map of the art form and the world it seeks to represent. This cartography should show both the major routes and the byways, along with essential places to visit and those that are more unusual. The Festival del film Locarno is no exception to the rule, and I think that looking through the program you will be able to distinguish the route map for this edition." — Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director

Above: Matías Piñeiro's The Princess of France

Concorso Internazionale (Official Competition)

A Blast (Syllas Tzoumerkas, Greece/Germany/Netherlands)

Alive (Jungbum Park, South Korea)

Horse Money (Pedro Costa,...

French director to receive the Pardo d’onore at the Locarno Film Festival next month - only the second woman to receive the honour.

French director Agnès Varda is to receive the Pardo d’onore (honorary Leopard) at the 67th edition of the Locarno Film Festival (Aug 6-16).

The festival’s tribute to her will be accompanied by screenings of a selection of her films: the features Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), The Creatures (1966), Lions Love (…and Lies) (1969), Documenteur (1981), Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi, 1985), The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000) and The Beaches of Agnes (Les Plages d’Agnès, 2008), and the short film Oncle Yanco (1967), as well as the five episodes of the TV series Agnès de ci de là Varda (2011).

Varda will also take part in an on-stage coversation at the festival.

After working as a theatre photographer, Varda began directing in 1954 with the feature-length film La Pointe Courte, starring [link=nm...

The American Film Institute (AFI) announced a program of four films selected by Guest Artistic Director Agnès Varda to screen at AFI Fest 2013 presented by Audi. Varda, once a resident of Los Angeles, makes a rare return to present and discuss her work at AFI Fest. As an additional tribute to Varda, photos from her influential French New Wave film Cleo From 5 to 7 (CLÉO De 5 À 7) are featured in this year’s festival marketing and programming materials.

As Guest Artistic Director, Varda has selected films that have inspired her throughout her six-decade career: Pickpocket (Dir Robert Bresson, 1959), A Woman Under The Influence (Dir John Cassavetes, 1974), The Marriage Of Maria Braun (Dir Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979) and After Hours (Dir Martin Scorsese, 1985). In addition, the festival will be screening a selection of Varda’s films, including restored versions of Cleo From 5 To 7 (CLÉO De 5 À 7) and Documenteur.

The Cannes Film Festival has always been a place, or a state of mind, that revels in contradiction. It is, of course, one of the glitziest and most fashionable art spectacles in the world — a mod parade of the sports-car-and-champagne elite, so redolent of old money and upper-crust bourgeois-bohemian Euro-chic class. At the same time, the movies that are celebrated and end up winning prizes here have, as often as not, been resounding critiques of that very culture — dire warnings, in fact, about how the stratifications bred by money tear away at our humanity. To me, the quintessential image of...

Today we get word that Agnes Varda is this year's recipient of the Carosse d'Or award for lifetime achievement - an award given annually by the Director Fortnight folks. And in a separate news release, after putting out The Beaches of Agnes, The Cinema Guild folks have picked up the rights to another Varda title in Cinevardaphoto in what will be a comprehensive DVD edition... - She might be getting her senior citizen discounts, but she is most definitely isn't slowing down. Today we get word that Agnes Varda is this year's recipient of the Carosse d'Or award for lifetime achievement - an award given annually by the Director Fortnight folks. And in a separate news release, after putting out The Beaches of Agnes, The Cinema Guild folks have picked up the rights to another Varda title, this time Cinevardaphoto in what will be a comprehensive...

When world-class writers get to the last fifth or so of their career trajectory, after having put in four or more decades building their monuments, they often give themselves permission to write a memoir, a summing up, an attempt to gaze back and figure out how life and art have fought and entangled and rhymed over the lifetime. As they should.

Filmmakers rarely do this, and it's a pity -- what we wouldn't have done for an autumnal self-examination from Luis Buñuel (we got a book, but not a film) or Orson Welles, and consider how lucky we'd be today if Jacques Rivette or Werner Herzog decided to venture backwards this way, inspecting the weave of creativity, history, personal tumult and movie love.

Chris Marker, of course, has been doing this all along, albeit rather impersonally, and his distinct approach may've ultimately been what compelled his pal and compatriot Agnès Varda,...

Start: 06/24/2009 End: 06/27/2009 Timezone: America/Los Angeles Start: 06/24/2009 End: 06/27/2009 Timezone: America/Los Angeles If you're in Los Angeles, catch a crapload of films by legendary Varda June 24-27th 2009! A gifted and outspoken feminist and one of the most acclaimed directors anywhere in the world, Agnès Varda could be considered the prototype of today's independent filmmaker. Varda is a survivor, a stubborn and patient observer of her time and her people, like the pop singer in Cleo from 5 to 7, the lovers in Le Bonheur or the drifter in Vagabond. "I have fought so much since I started ... for something that comes from emotion, from visual emotion, sound emotion, feeling, and finding a shape for that," Varda has said...

Varda directed her first feature, La Pointe Courte, in 1954, with no formal training in filmmaking. The movie has often been identified as the film that started the French New Wave ("and a famous flop,...